Motorola teams up with Ferrari for MotoRAZR MAXX V6

Although it's passing the checkered flag quite a few laps later than the McLaren-branded handsets we've seen of late, Ferrari has utilized that long-standing partnership with Motorola to kick out a flashy limited edition MotoRAZR MAXX, dubbed the V6 Ferrari.

Although it's not like Ferrari to stop with just six cylinders, this handset sports a sleek, black finish, an unmistakable yellow Ferrari logo, two-megapixel camera, VGA webcam for video telephony, 50MB of internal memory, microSD expansion slot, Bluetooth 2.0+EDR, USB 2.0 connectivity, and "OTA PC syncing" to boot.

Additionally, you'll find HSDPA, EDGE, and GPRS options, and for that extra luxurious touch, you'll hear an F1 "roar" each time you switch the device on, images of the Ferrari F430 engine on the mini external display, and a Ferrari automobile on the internal display.

So if you've been scouting the perfect mobile to accompany that newly-purchased piece of Italian engineering, you can snag the MotoRAZR MAXX V6 Ferrari in five undisclosed (but fairly easy to guess) continents starting tomorrow, and while the €490 ($633) pricetag might turn off the average joe, at least you get a swank red leather carrying case to keep this thing in tip-top shape. Click on through for a wide open shot.

Source: http://www.engadget.com/

Motorola To Offer Movie-Playing Phone

Faced with relentless pressure from Carl Icahn, and desperate for a follow-up success to the RAZR, Motorola CEO Ed Zander addressed a crowd in Silicon Valley and promised that an upcoming handset would be a "media monster". FierceWireless has speculated that the handset in question may be the Z8, which we were shown at 3GSM earlier this year for EU release.

Zander says the mystery phone, out next week, will be capable of playing video at a TV-grade 30fps. Most notably, though, the phone will play full-length movies and video content from SD memory cards.

Motorola is working with content partners to seed the SD content ecosystem. I'm glad they are using an existing popular storage standard as opposed to proprietary systems, like Sony always uses to kill its own ecosystems.

With SD, users could obviously also buy content online, and move it to the phone via SD, too. So I'll add that most importantly, this is another swipe against the expensive broadcast mobile video networks in that the cost of sneakernet to move the content to the mobile phone via SD is ~$0, while the cost of moving bits on unicast and broadcast networks is something higher.

Ask the Long Distance companies how much fun it is to compete in a market where competitors have a $0 cost basis for your marquee product...